International TableTop Day 2016! This year’s 12 games!

It’s our 4th International TableTop Day! We have spent each year of this event by recommending 12 games before, so here’s our games from 2013, 2014, and 2015. But it’s 12 whole different games for this year, so you can see all those after the jump. A couple of words about each, and if you have any questions, you’ll find some TableTop videos or you can ask us questions in the comments!

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Clark Gregg versus Hayley Atwell, Lip Sync Battle

David and I watched this last weekend and it is simply amazing and must be watched by anyone who is a fan of Clark Gregg or Hayley Atwell. Clark Gregg kills it doing Brittany Spears, Toxic, which will forever be known as the song at the end of the world because of Doctor Who. Then there is Hayley Atwell doing an amazing Lady Gaga.

What’s on Netflix, May 2016

The answer is… sort of nothing. I mean, there’s a few movies definitely worth watching, but for the majority this month seems like a good chance to catch up on things if you’re behind. Still need to see some of those classic movies that came on Netflix last month? This is a good chance to do so, they’ll be sticking around for May as well.

Sixteen Candles

Honestly, this is about the only movie that stood out to me as being worth watching this month. If you grew up in the 80’s or 90’s, this movie is an absolute classic. John Hughes perfectly captures the awkwardness of teen lives, from dealing with family to having a crush on someone who seems well out of your league.

To Catch a Thief

An Alfred Hitchcock classic. If you haven’t seen it, it’s worth checking out at least once – if anything at least to see the beautiful elegance of Cary Grant and Grace Kelly.

Beyond those two movies, there’s a lot of sequels (Kindergarten Cop 2…) and not-so-great comedies from the 90’s and 00’s like Bring it On 1 & 2 and The Nutty Professor. Several additional seasons of shows are being added, but really, use the month of May to catch up on what you’ve been meaning to watch.

What are you watching on Netflix right now?

Alaska Robotics Mini Con

Alaska Robotic Mini Con

I am so incredibly proud of my little town because we have a growing geek community and our local comic book shop decided to host a mini comic convention. It was great because they got enough community support to hold the con with free entry!

I went with Geek Baby for just a little while and there was so much going on. Unfortunately I was not able to participate in a lot of the happenings, but I did get to walk through the “hall” and look at all the comics and artists that were participating. There were a lot of people there and a lot of people showed up in cosplay even, which was amazing. The number of artists that they got to come to Juneau was pretty amazing. Here are some of the best parts of the event.

Science Fiction Today – Hover Boards

I’ve been amused to hear that Hover Boards are finally showing up, that people have been pushing forward to create them. The deadline they were aiming for was the date from Back to the Future 2 last year. Which made Hover Boards like a prophecy: that they would happen in that year.

More than anything else in that movie, the Hover Board is what seems to have captured and held our collective imagination. Or maybe because it seems easier and more likely than flying cars or Jaws 19. Maybe because it’s a sellable commodity that you can hope to make a bunch of money off of – but no, I think more than that. It seems like a labor of love. Of trying to bring a bit of the “future” here to us now.

Because this world we’re living in – as we pass dates from future visions, like Days of Future Past and Back to the Future – looks nothing like what science fiction envisioned. And what did science fiction envision?

Thanks, Commander Sisko.

We were expecting flying cars. Hover Boards. Things that move us around faster. And space travel, moving us into the stars. What we got instead, as the commercial says (and which has stuck with me all these years) is the Internet. Or maybe, drones, which work as a networked extension of ourselves, rather than us moving ourselves.

Rather than transmitting ourselves via improved transportation, we’re transmitting ideas. Meaning that we get to both bring the world – information-wise – to us, and we get to send our ideas back out. In such a way as science fiction somewhat failed to predict. That’s part of the reason why something like Neuromancer (a 1984 novel) is seen as such a classic: it was far closer to right than wrong when it comes to predictions of the future. Certainly better than so much other science fiction.

I’m not saying the point of science fiction is to perfectly predict the future. Nor that it’s our job to try to build the future that has been predicted. Which makes the anecdote of the Hover Boards being created just in time for their “predicted” date just so interesting. It’s a little piece of trying to create not the future we’re building towards, but the future we dreamed up.

And so maybe, if we can perfect the Hover Board, we can create some of the other things science fiction has dreamed up. Or solve some of the other societal problems science fiction shows us moving past. Maybe we can avoid some of the pitfalls science fiction warns us of. Maybe, just maybe…

We can dream.